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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Responding to the PARCC and Common Core (Modified)

Last spring, when I was teaching at a small school in the Bronx, I
caused an unnecessary ruckus by posting my thoughts about a presentation
my staff received on the looming impacts of PARCC and Common Core
implementation. The post was shared by Gotham Schools, in the Digest for
Grassroots Education, and was disseminated to many UFT chapter leaders.
I discovered soon afterward that my words were seriously concerning to a
number of senior DOE employees, including, apparently, Chancellor
Walcott and Deputy Chancellor Suransky.

Disciplinary action was taken against me, and I was threatened with a
lawsuit if I didn’t take the post down. The reason I believe I ruffled
so many feathers was because I was a DOE employee publicly admonishing
policies supported by top DOE officials. However, the reason I made
myself vulnerable to retaliation was because I inadvertently worded my
post as if it were as much of an attack on the presenter (which I
certainly did not intend) as it was on the politics that have been
driving PARCC and Common Core.

I sent a sincere
apology to the presenter (who I certainly did not mean to personally
attack) and took the post down.

And now I’m putting it back up.

I
have modified the post so that any part that might be misconstrued as
an attack against an individual is now clearly framed as an attack
against a misguided ideology that acts as if it is hellbent on
destroying the public part of public education, which is all I ever
meant for it to be.

It is my hope that anyone who was offended by my original post this
past spring will appreciate my efforts to make this post obviously solely about fighting
policies I vehemently disagree with and respect my right to do so. I
believe some people found the content of this post useful and would prefer to keep
it available on my blog for anybody who would like to reference or respond to it.

Below is the modified post.

Responding to the PARCC and Common Core (Modified)

This past May, a presentation was given to my small school in the Bronx informing us why and how we would be
implementing the Common Core, and how the PARCC (Partnership for the
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) consortium would hold
us accountable for their implementation.

(I admittedly had to leave for a doctor’s appointment after about 40
minutes and did not have the opportunity to hear the end of it.)

The
presentation we received began by informing us that research from
Columbia University indicates that “the classroom” is responsible for
75% of a student’s achievement.

Next we looked at PISA results from 2003. We were asked to ponder
why the United States fared so poorly in comparison with other
countries. It was suggested that it was because we weren't yet operating
with a common curriculum. The United States and Canada have the same
teachers and the same students, so why did Canada perform so much better
on the PISA? The answer: they work from the same standards.

Next came the PARCC assessments. We were told the new assessments
will help our students think more critically, which, it was concluded,
will help them score higher on the PISA (it was easy to get the impression that
scoring well on the PISA was the end goal). By 2014 the core subjects
(math and reading/writing) will be assessed by four PARCC assessments
throughout the year in New York State.

Lastly, right before I left, my staff heard that we were not being
rigorous enough with our students. We were told PARCC (through
accountability, I suppose) will help us elevate the level of rigor in
our classrooms, and apparently prepare our students to be college and
career ready.

Many of us have heard all of these talking points before and are used to them. What
concerned me was the captive audience the presentation had. Many
members of my former staff were either brand new to teaching (in their
first three years) or simply unaware of the important facts that the
presentation left out. As I left the room for the doctor's office, I
vowed, as chapter leader, to write an email to my staff informing them
of alternative perspectives. Here is that email.

Dear Colleagues,

During our professional development this
past Wednesday, it was explained to us how and why we will be using the
Common Core State Standards, and how and why PARCC assessments will help
us implement those standards.

For those of you relatively unfamiliar with the Common Core or the
PARCC consortium, I'd like to provide you with a little perspective. I
don't think the presentation was entirely forthcoming in its rationale
for the use of these standards and assessments. While I recognize these
are bureaucratic mandates that we'll probably all be required to follow,
as your chapter leader, I think it's important you know that there are
many respected people in the world of education who would
have vehemently disagreed with what we were being told.

Let's start with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). For a few
decades now, calls for a set of national standards have been growing,
the idea being that if everyone is focusing on the same content and
skills across the country, we'll be better able to assure that all
students will graduate high school on something of an equal playing
field (also - there's a strong argument suggesting that national
standards will help prevent massive learning disruption for those
students who move from one locale to another). This call for national
standards has arisen partially out of a concern that many schools across
the country are holding students to inappropriate expectations, which
is, in part, a dilemma that has arisen in the way our
country initially conceived of education. While every state
constitution guarantees access to a public education, the US
Constitution never even mentions the word. States have always taken the
tenth amendment to signify their right to manage education as they see
fit.

However, it hasn't been until recently (the CCSS were only finalized
last year) that enough political capital has been accumulated to
actually devise and make an attempt at implementing the core standards,
much of it done in the wake of shock doctrine rhetoric and
the emergence of substantial investment on behalf of private foundations
(e.g. Gates, Broad, Walton) in the name of improving public education
by imposing business practices - i.e. ultra-standardization and
accountability.

(Because of the Constitution, the federal government cannot compel
states to comply with its CCSS mission. Instead, as it has done in the
past, it's utilized carrots and sticks to move state policy in the
direction it sees fit. Race to the Top is exactly that. More money for
states willing to fall in line with Common Core and less for those
uninterested. This has been particularly powerful given the dreadful
fiscal climate of the past few years.)

While national standards undoubtedly have some merits (see my
extended discussion and comments on them here), they are certainly
not widely agreed upon as a solution to our educational mediocrity. (See
Yong Zhao, one of the most outspoken opponents of our current national
reform agenda.) What I find to be most worrying about them is the
opportunity they provide to for-profit vendors to make millions writing
scripted curriculum and tests that we don't need. Would funding more
adequate teacher-training programs not be a better investment of our tax
money? I'm also worried because a national set of standards invites a
national curriculum, which is currently being written by the Gates and Pearson Foundations. Is this who we want deciding how we teach our
students?

When the presentation we received pointed to the math results from
the 2003 PISA (which I thought was odd since there are more recent results available, and math is not the only thing PISA tests), it was
suggested that the reason we, as a country, are doing so poorly is that
we do not currently employ a common curriculum across the board.
Teachers in different classrooms are all doing different things. We were
told that Canada has the same teachers and the same students, but they
scored a lot higher than we did. They have a national curriculum and we
don't. Therefore, we need a national curriculum.

At this point it seemed appropriate to point out (although I held my
tongue) that Finland, which is widely perceived as having one of the
best educational systems in the world and consistently fares among the
best on the PISA, does not have any standardized tests for all of its
students. It also doesn't force teachers to follow its national
standards, but rather suggests they be used as a guideline. Rather than
impose a national curriculum and test after test after test, Finland has
elevated the profession of teaching so that it's highly respected. One
Finnish official said that the only point he sees in testing Finnish
students is to prove to the business community that lots of testing
doesn't improve achievement. See stories here, here, and here.

In regard to Canada, the presentation was not exactly correct in
suggesting that the only difference between our two countries is a
national curriculum. If you look at UNICEF's report on child poverty in
rich countries (page 4), you'll notice that the United States has the
highest rate of child poverty in the industrialized world, a rate seven
percent higher than that of Canada's. Our students aren't exactly the
same.

The presentation went on to imply that the best way for us to ensure
this national curriculum is with a battery of tests, four times a year
in the core subjects beginning in 2014. The tests are known as the PARCC
assessments. For those of you unfamiliar, the PARCC Consortium is the
brainchild of the Race to the Top program, designed and implemented by
the US Department of Education with Arne Duncan at its head. Duncan, who
called the Gates Foundation's The Turnaround Challenge "the bible" to
school restructuring, and has always been a supporter of corporate
reform (since he was "CEO" of Chicago Public Schools), has long been a
believer that the best way toward improved education is through
increased accountability. (Note: Duncan was never a teacher.)

What our presentation did not cover is that one of the goals of
PARCC is to measure teacher effectiveness with these tests using the
value-added model of teacher assessment. For reasons on why the
value-added model is an extremely flawed way to measure teacher
effectiveness, go here, here, here, here, and here. (For more on
why many teachers are upset with Duncan's reform agenda go here, here,
and here. Obama, who won a lot of teachers over in his campaign,
apparently doesn't quite understand what his own DOE is doing.)

The last point I want to touch on, and, in my view, perhaps the
most insidious, is the notion that the "classroom" is responsible for
nearly 75% of a student's achievement (whatever that means). This
presentation was the first time I'd heard this argument made with the
use of the word "classroom" rather than "teacher." While classroom could
be taken to include equipment, peers, class size, the teacher, climate,
etc... I'm assuming the real argument here is that teachers can make
all the difference. The corporate reform movement is fond of claiming
that poverty is not an excuse for low-achieving schools (as measured by
standardized tests). There is, however, substantial data that suggest
otherwise. The Texas Tribune recently put forth some staggering data
Michael Marder has collected on poverty and student achievement in
Texas. Furthermore, responsible policy analysts and researchers have
said time and again that the teacher is only the most important
IN-SCHOOL factor impacting a child's achievement (here, here, and here),
leaving room for the reality that home life plays the most significant
role. Lastly, a PISA report from 2006, along with a number of other
studies, have routinely found that parents' educational background, the
number of books in the home, parent occupation, and gender routinely
rank among the strongest correlatives of student achievement worldwide.
It seems absolutely ridiculous to me that what happens in my classroom
will somehow overcome the often crippling effects of poverty, and the
data agree with me. As much as I believe in the importance in excellent
teaching, I refuse to be held accountable for factors I do not control.
It's my belief that we overemphasize the efficacy of schools
in impoverished communities as a means of deluding ourselves into
believing we really can provide equality of opportunity in this country
without addressing the the many historical injustices that have
persisted in our democracy.

What we saw in our PD on Wednesday was a piece of
the manifestation of the corporate reform ideology. It is, regardless of
how the presentation may have come off, overtly political, and rooted
in the belief that more tests, more standards, and more teacher/school
accountability will improve our national test scores, which, in their
minds, are linked with educational achievement. I write this email not
to convince you that this reform movement is wrong (although I believe
strongly that it is), but to ensure that you're aware that what we heard
does not enjoy widespread agreement.

The first step toward agency is understanding. If you made it this
far, my hope is that this may have provided you with a little more
understanding about what's happening in our profession.

This is fantastic, and articulates clearly many of my own objections. I was noticing that the "here" links are broken/not working. Any chance you could restore those? I would love to follow up and read those recommended resources.

Certainly an interesting post. Thank you for sharing. One thing: Canada does not have a national curriculum. Education is a provincial responsibility. Any national standards are guidelines only. What gets taught in a math classroom in Alberta is vastly different from one in Nova Scotia.

James: Thanks for taking the time to put this information out there. It doesn't surprise me that the DOE wasn't happy with your truth-telling actions. When I worked as a teacher in San Diego, teachers were threatened with reprisals if they told the media that teachers were being forced to buy their own paper b/c there was no money for supplies (crazy, huh?).

I especially applaud your statement: "As much as I believe in the importance in excellent teaching, I refuse to be held accountable for factors I do not control. It's my belief that we overemphasize the efficacy of schools in impoverished communities as a means of deluding ourselves into believing we really can provide equality of opportunity in this country without addressing the the many historical injustices that have persisted in our democracy."

About Me

I'm a national board certified teacher of language arts and social studies at the Academy of Citizenship and Empowerment in the Highline School District, just south of Seattle, WA. My students come from extremely diverse backgrounds.
This is my tenth year teaching and fifth at my current school. I previously taught in New York City; Washington, DC; Renton, WA; and Knoxville, TN.